


Fast Car

by riddlesinthedark11



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, High School, Melodrama, Small Towns, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22123783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riddlesinthedark11/pseuds/riddlesinthedark11
Summary: Draco and Hermione both have something to run from. Maybe they'll run together.Based on the song "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	Fast Car

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!! Here's a short bit of angst to get me back in the habit of writing. I'm not feeling particularly inspired to work on New Rules right now (although I'm hoping to finish it) and I was feeling melodramatic so I picked up a one-shot I was writing many moons ago. Unbeta'd so mistakes are my own. Big thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments while I was away-each one got me closer to the keyboard :)
> 
> I don't own the song or Harry Potter!

Draco leaned against the counter, glancing around at the party goers and sipping his beer. He had only been at the party for an hour and he already wanted to leave. Everyone was in high spirits—it was the beginning of summer and they had all just graduated from high school.

Well, almost all of them. He had dropped out of school in the eleventh grade. Perhaps that was why he was feeling out of place. His former classmates were celebrating the beginning of their adult lives and he had already been forced to become one.

♥♥♥♥

Hermione sighed and rolled her eyes. She was perched on the arm rest of a chair and one of her extremely drunk classmates was attempting to hit on her. Brushing his groping hand off her thigh, she stood and made her way towards the kitchen. She had been a little lost in thought before he had sat down next to her and she hadn’t watched her drink closely. She figured she had better pour it out and get a new one.

On her way, a few of her closer friends cheered and waved at her. She smiled back and mock-toasted them with her cup, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was happy for them, but for her, the end of high school was nothing to celebrate. As soon as universities started up in the fall, she was expected to begin her dentistry degree and eventually take over the family business. Her parents had made that abundantly clear. There was no option to pursue biochemistry, or international development, or humanities, or any of the other subjects she was passionate about. According to her parents’ wishes, Hermione was going to marry a respectable young man, become a dentist, raise her children, and die, all in the same small town she grew up in.

♥♥♥♥

Draco tipped back his beer bottle and finished the last few drops. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he walked over to the fridge to get himself another one. While he fished around for the brand he liked, he felt a light tap on his shoulder.

“Do you have a bottle opener?”

He turned to find Hermione Granger waiting for his reply with a beer bottle in her hand.

“Um, yeah,” he said, closing the door to the fridge and placing his own beer down on the counter. He rummaged around in the pocket of his jeans for a few seconds before finding it and holding it out to her. She took it and deftly popped the cap off, then reached behind him and opened his as well.

She returned the opener and they clinked their drinks together before taking a sip.

“So, why did you come to this?” Hermione asked him.

“Well that’s a little rude, Granger.” It was common knowledge that Draco had dropped out of school because of his messed-up family. It was also common knowledge that you didn’t bring it up if you liked your nose the way it was.

“Well excuse me, but I thought it looked fairly obvious that you also weren’t here to celebrate. So why are you here?”

She wasn’t wrong, but Draco didn’t see why she needed to know that. God knows she had bested him enough times in high school.

“Also? Why aren’t you celebrating, Little Miss Valedictorian?” Blaise and Theo kept him up to date on the comings and goings of his ex-peers, but it didn’t take a genius to guess that Hermione Granger would be top of the class. She ducked her head down, suddenly quite interested in her beer and he relaxed a little, hoping that this would distract her enough to move away from her line of questioning. She always had been frustratingly perceptive, and Draco was in no mood to talk about his family, or why he had dropped out, or why he wished he hadn’t, or why that led him here.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business Malfoy,” she huffed, taking a long swig of her drink.

“Just a few moments ago it was your business what I was doing here, Granger,” he said, raising his eyebrows and smirking at her. She frowned.

“If you must know, I’m here to drink, not to celebrate. You can either drink with me or find someone else to annoy.”

♥♥♥♥

Hermione wiggled her toes in the cool grass and burrowed her head farther into the crook of Draco’s shoulder. They lay in the backyard in the chilly air, far from the sounds of the party. It was the early hours of the morning, and the sun was reaching up with tendrils of pink to banish the stars. Stars which, until now, they had been drunkenly fashioning into elephants, and palm trees, and mountains, and a million other fancies. Stars which had kept them from the truth of their conversation in the kitchen and the reason they were alone together now, and not inside with their friends basking in the memories of what seemed to them like the most important time of their lives.

Draco pulled her closer, tracing absentminded patterns on her lower back with the tips of his fingers. She drew in a breath to ask him to write words on her back for her to guess like she used to do with her parents as a young girl, but he spoke first.

“Tell me why you aren’t celebrating,” he breathed, rustling her hair with his words. She closed her eyes, and the world spun behind them. She was just drunk enough to tell him, then—not so drunk that she had forgotten, but not so sober that she remembered who Draco Malfoy was. For now, he was a warm boy with a nice chest whose fingers were skating over her back and she thought she might tell him anything he wanted to know.

“There’s nothing for me to celebrate,” she said softly, almost to herself. “My parents have a life planned out for me that I don’t want, and high school was the last thing standing between me and their dreams. It scares me that if they have their way, I’m going to die here long before I’m buried. Doesn’t it scare you?”

He sighed and brought his hand up to stroke her hair. “You know, I might have gone my whole life without knowing there was someone else in this town who wasn’t perfectly content to let it drown them. It used to scare me, but at some point, you either change or you resign yourself, you know? I came tonight to pretend it was me. To pretend that I fought valiantly and lost valedictorian to you instead of shrinking even further into the broken life my parents beat into me.” He drew his hand from her hair and sat up, curling in on himself to rest his chin on his knees.

“Change or resign yourself,” Hermione whispered as she rose to follow him. She searched herself for words to follow his, but again he spoke first.

“That constellation looks like one of my tattoos if you squint,” he said, looking up now and pointing to a set of five stars clinging on in the wake of morning. She came to kneel in front of him.

“Show me.”

He held out his hand to her in a fist. The Malfoy M was inked into his skin like a ring. Her mind conjured a strange image of wax being poured onto his finger and the tattoo being printed into it like a seal. Like a brand.

“Does it hurt?” She asked, taking his hand in her own and pressing her mouth to the ink. She turned his hand and kissed the centre of his palm.

“All the time,” he answered, pulling her into him by their joined hands and kissing her. She slid her hands into his hair and rolled over to feel the weight of him grounding her. The sun washed onto his back, warming him as he warmed her. There was no urgency to their kiss; they were simply exploring the feeling that had begun in them both as they chased their dreams through the constellations. _Not love_ , Hermione thought, _not passion, just comfort_. Perhaps a comfort more worthy of resigning herself to.

She broke their kiss and he pulled them up to sit, still tangled in each other.

“Let’s leave,” she said. “Leave tonight for the city. I’ve saved up enough to take the program that I want without my parents’ help. You could work and finish high school, we could—”

“Change,” he finished. “We could change.”

♥♥♥♥

In the soft light sunset, a car sped toward the city, bringing two people to a life less than they imagined, but greater than they feared.


End file.
